Going far back into history mankind has created toys and devices that create or attempt to create the illusion of motion or animation. In the nineteenth century we saw the invention of the zoetrope U.S. Pat. No. 64,117 to Lincoln, 1867 Apr. 23, which while not the first such device, did much to popularize the seeming magic of seeing drawings appear to move and come to life. This original zoetrope operated by means of a slotted hollow cylinder, or drum, containing animation strips and discs that spin on a stand. By viewing the spinning animation through slits in the drum, the blur of color is broken into a rapid succession of sequential images producing the illusion of motion. But the view through small slits on the side of a drum offered a very limited viewing angle, and said Lincoln's design depended on ambient light cast through the top of the open cylinder to light the animation strips, which resulted in a poorly lit view of the animation.
There is known in the prior art many iterations and improvements on said Lincoln's zoetrope such as U.S. Pat. No. 972,344A to Davis, 1909 Oct. 4, U.S. Pat. No. 1,925,136A to Harvey, 1930 Nov. 28, U.S. Pat. No. 9,475,536B1 to Hancock, 2015 Aug. 26. To address the issue of poor lighting in a zoetrope design relying on ambient light, there are known in the prior art examples of electric lights being placed inside the zoetrope drum such as U.S. Pat. No. 2,538,407A to Allen, 1946 Feb. 6, patent EP1081543A1 to Ecosse, 1999 Aug. 31, and patent DE202005013118U1 to Lorenz, 2005 Aug. 19. The present inventor has also designed and built classically styled zoetropes with electric lights to illuminate the animation therein, which can be viewed at www.ZOEFLIX.com. While these iterations and improvements addressed some drawbacks of said Lincoln's original zoetrope, or take it in one new direction or another, there is still much that could be done and improved in this area.
There is also known in the prior art a dome shaped toy top utilizing a moving picture apparatus, which is U.S. Pat. No. 3,640,019A to Jones, Schmidt, and Smith, 1970 Feb. 9. The embodiment mentioned in said toy top patent that provided a means for lighting the interior of said toy top is by constructing the dome of transparent materials with a plurality of dark surfaces intermittently spaced about the periphery thereof to form viewing slots. The rest of the dome is left clear to enable ambient light to enter therethrough to illuminate the pictures within said toy top's dome interior. This reliance on ambient light through the partially clear and partially obscured dome retains, if not exacerbates, the problem of poor lighting in said Lincoln's original zoetrope. Further, I have found through my own experimentation that said clear dome with intermittently spaced dark surfaces to form viewing slots is an inferior construction to open or cut away slits. This is because viewing the animation through transparent material interferes with the view of animation because of glare reflection off both sides of the transparent material.